Talk:English language/Archive 12

Where English is spoken and the Map
First of all, I noticed the absence of Indonesia in the list of countries where it's an official language. I've lived here for almost 6 years (I'm American) and it's pretty clear it's the official 2nd language of the country.

I know it's also used in Sri Lanka but I'm not sure of its status there. I can, if needed, contact my Sri Lankan friend to find out.

Which brings me to the map. It needs to be updated to show this info. Sorry to make more work for you folks! :)

Best regards, Glenn McGrew ReveurGAM 03:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


 * English is not an official language in Indonesia, no matter how common. Do you have a reference to suggest otherwise? In East Timor, English and Indonesian are constitutionally defined as 'working languages'. regards --Merbabu 03:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


 * And according to the Wikipedia article the official languages of Sri Lanka are Sinhala and Tamil. --teb728 03:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


 * It does bring up a question that it may be worthy to either add to the map (though I would say no) or to place in the text (my preference) countries where English is so widely spoken so well known and spoken that it is entirely possible to never have to learn the local language and where locals commonly switch to English to accomodate a foreigner - although this does bring up verifiability issues. The Indonesia example may be one, the Netherlands may be another. --sony-youth pléigh 08:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The countries where that is not the case might make a shorter list. --teb728 08:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Maybe - but from my experience of the Netherlands, and what I gather from ReveurGAM's experience of Indonesia, these are extreme examples of the pervasiveness of English. I've lived in the Netherlands for two years and came with every intention of becoming fluent in Dutch, but nobody will speak it to me. Two years of what would in any other case be total emmersion and the best I can manage is asking for a packet of cigarettes, which, if I do in Dutch, the shop assistant will inevitably answer in English unless I fake a Dutch accent. And my experience is the norm. TV/cinema is in English. Advertising headlines are in English. It doesn't even have the sense of a foreign language, its a case more of code-switching. Anyho, that's my 2 euro cents. --sony-youth pléigh 09:15, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. First, I apologize. I checked with an official in the dept. of education and she confirmed that English is an unofficial language in Indonesia. However, considering that the government requires it be taught in most schools, and it is pushing this immersion program to convert schools to English as the main language of instruction, it certainly seems like they might as well declare it.

What I'm really suggesting is that a third color be introduced to the map to show countries where it's neither a primary nor an official language, but its usage is so prevalent or important that it needs to be shown. I have met many Dutch people (not to mention from Germany, Belgium and other parts of the E.U.) and most of them were fluent enough to impress me. I certainly hadn't expected it. From what has been said, one can live in the Netherlands without ever having to learn Dutch.

English is not as obvious here since many people cannot communicate well in English, if at all, but the programs are in place in the government and there is a substantial interest in English - mostly amongst the middle and upper classes that have the extra income to study it. The problem is that most local teachers in schools are so bad at English that they can do little more than teach reading and writing. Books written by self-styled experts here contain many errors and most of the books published locally for the schools (including exam-prep booklets), as well as material prepared by teachers, are so full of mistakes that one wonders how anyone can speak English at all. One MUST learn Indonesian to be able to function here alone.

Thus, between Indonesia and the Netherlands the stories are quite different, but there appears to be a common thread - the interest in English and its backing by the government - officially and unofficially.

Aside from local languages and dialects, the only other languages that get a good amount of attention (although less) here are Mandarin (Chinese) and Arabic. Arabic, due to the importance of Islam here, is probably the second-most-prominent foreign language, and it is taught in most schools as well as at mosques. There are tutors and learning centers, too, but there aren't as many as English. It is hard to travel through Semarang or Jakarta without finding either a language school that teaches English or a regular school that does so, and you can see signs offering private English lessons more often than indigenous birds. As a clarification, many people here can read Arabic aloud but do not understand it.

If not in the map, then a list in the text would be nice. This is, after all, an encyclopedia, and it would be nice if we could make it more comprehensive, right? :)

If you have questions about verifiability, you may certainly ask me to do research, since I'm here in the capitol of Central Java (Semarang), and I have contacts in the dept. of education and police. Also, I believe that Merbabu is a native and could do even more than can I.

Regards, Glenn ReveurGAM 03:13, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Much more than Indonesia, or perhaps that should be even more than Indonesia - how about Malaysia? I work in a Malaysian company but all documents and meetings are in English. Everyone learns English at school and government policy is that Malaysians are taught maths and science in English. You can chat to taxi drivers in English. Perhaps a quarter of road side adverts are in English, there are at least 4 English national newspapers for the local market. The government will deal with you in English but make no doubt Bahasia Malaysia is the national and therefore only official language (but for the reasons given above for the Netherlands it is difficult to practice Malay). It is possible a similar situation exists in countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Colouring as an official language is clearly not right in these circumstances but to my mind leaving the map blank means its not an accurate reflection of the usage of English either Nickhk 01:10, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree. If you have a look at the Spanish language page you will notice that parts of the US are coloured in as Spanish speaking even though Spanish is not an official language of the US. The reason why these areas are coloured is that signigicant parts of the population speak Spanish. I think that the English page should do something similar or the Spanish language page should leave the US blank. What do you think? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.49.197.7 (talk) 01:22, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

So, I've noticed that some people agree, yet the editors have said nothing. How does it work now? Who do we contact to encourage them to make the necessary changes? It seems kind of pointless to contribute if, in the end, it is ignored. I am new here so can someone advise me please?

Glenn ReveurGAM 09:40, 9 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi Glenn. About your comment "the editors say nothing". My response is: In Wikipedia there is no such thing as an "official" editor. You, me, everyone who wants to be, is an editor. So go ahead - start making that list and others will join you in adding to it. The most important requirement for any addition or change to an article is that you must cite authorotative references for your facts. Although accuracy is important don't worry too much about making mistakes - everything you do to an article can easily be undone Roger 19:23, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Hey there are 100 million native speakers of English in India (learnt as their first language) source www.nationmaster.com and lets not forget Pakistan, Malaysia and Philipines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.211.73.125 (talk) 13:41, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Reduce that number by a factor of 1000 and you're about right. —Angr 18:33, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Out of all the Indians I have met, taught or worked with (granted, not an enormous number, but a fair sampling) from different parts of India, I have never met one that claimed that they are a native English speaker, and I have been told that English is a second language there, ousted from 1st place by the local languages like Hindi and Thamil.  Further, I have never met an Indian (and I say this as a native American English speaker) whilst overseas who could qualify as a native English speaker by my standards or anyone else's.  In fact, while I have met some Indians who are fairly adept at English, they are not the norm but, rather, the exception.  I have met plenty of Indians who were not adept at listening or speaking.  There are Indians who work at the school I currently work at and, while one is fairly good at English, listening to them teach in English makes me cringe.  Most of the Indonesians do, too.

If you care to look at English books produced in India (and I have looked at a few), you can readily see that their level of English is not on a par with a native speaker. Of course, even books from Singapore have flaws within them, but not to the degree of Indian books. I would never, unless I had carefully reviewed it first, agree to use an Indian book. No offense to Indians - I like them. I want to move to India someday. There are ESL/EFL speakers of English in India, Pakistan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries, but their mother tongue was not English (in most cases), thus they do not qualify as native speakers. ReveurGAM (talk) 09:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, so is there a consensus about changing the map to include countries like Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Netherlands and others where English is an unofficial language?

ReveurGAM (talk) 09:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Definitely not. Starting to add countries on the basis of "Hm, they speak English rather well over there" is nothing but original research and has no place in this article. I agree that most people I've met from the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Germany or Belgium speak English at least as well as people from some of the countries on the map here, but that doesn't justify marking those countries as English speaking. And what do you mean by countries "where English is an unofficial language"? Which standards do you suggest for selecting these countries? Our personal experience or self-reported ability? Neither is good. JdeJ (talk) 12:25, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I want the map changed but it would not be original research to make a map showing countries where english proficiency met some arbitrary benchmark. So long as the numbers were sourced for the countries shown it would not be original research no matter how arbitrary the selection of inclusion criteria was.Zebulin (talk) 16:38, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


 * True, but it would still be rather problematic in many ways and possibly give the wrong impression. I hate to generalise, but my impression is that people in some countries tend to regard their English as far better than it is while we got the opposite problem in other countries. I've met quite a number of Italians, Greeks and Pakistanis who have put down full fluency in English on their CVs and barely managed to communicate at all. I've also met many Scandinavians, Swiss and Dutch who have been very modest about their English despite being functionally fluent. So a map using self-reported ability as a basis would not be original research, but I'm not too sure it would be very accurate either. Besides, I think that finding such data for most countries could be pretty hard. So my main point is that we create much more problems than we solve by changing the map. The text already mentions the rather high level of self-reported competence in many countries so the information is there already. I suggest keeping English as an official language in the map. JdeJ (talk) 18:44, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

What I would like to suggest for the map is that a different color be used to show other countries where English is a prominent language; perhaps two colors - one for where it is a functionally prominent language (such as the Netherlands) and others where it an unofficially official language (such as Indonesia). Or, if that doesn't suit the needs and requirements of Wiki, a separate map that shows the proliferation of English. Of course, this would have to be via some sort of statistics or reported usage. Since personal reporting, despite its validity and the fact that all reporting is essentially personal, is not allowed, I cannot report to you (and expect it to be used) the fact that English is a required language in public schools in Indonesia starting in primary (previously secondary), nor does the fact that I work with different people who are involved in the movement to convert national schools into schools that use English as the primary language with the idea of raising their standards to national plus (a mixture of local and foreign curriculums) or international (a foreign curriculum), amongst others. I cannot report to this group that I am called upon by the National Department of Education in Central Java to do recordings (with other native English speakers) for the tests they use here, or to participate in contests involving English, or that I travel to Tegal once a month so that the students at SMP1 (Tegal's Junior High School 1) can be exposed to me (and a co-worker). I cannot report my experience in going to Gubug for the exact same reason early this year. This program, formerly the immersion program, but now with a different label, is being executed in schools around Central Java - other places I cannot even spell the names of. I cannot report to you about the eminent PhD, Dr. Helena Agustien, who is a consultant for the government on this and other educational matters, for whom I will soon work.

If I wrote a book about the subject, then I could get it submitted as fact.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not whining about the somewhat arbitrary nature of the rules regarding submissions needing citations. It helps to keep out the stuff that is unverified and unverifiable. It helps to reduce the number of errors. It keeps the crackpots (of whom I might be considered as one by some people, I suppose) from spouting whatever they want. I am merely trying to make a point about the subject at hand - the English map - and the fact that it could be more comprehensive than it currently is. There are certainly enough countries that fit into the categories of "unofficial but highly used," and "unofficial but used officially," or something to that effect.

If it will help, I can take questions from those of you who are interested, and pass them on to the powers that be here - people who work in or for the DepDikNas (National Department of Education) - and report back what they say. I just think that our map (or an additional one) should be more comprehensive. Hey, if you need to, you can look at all the countries that have English First schools in them! :)

Just my two cents worth (factoring in inflation, depression and theft by the government), Glenn ReveurGAM (talk) 08:16, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your post and for your observations in Indonesia. What you report from Indonesia seems to be more or less the same as in almost any other country in the world, and I don't think anybody will call you a crackhead. It is of course always sad to hear that efforts are being made to wipe out domestic languages, but that is a personal opinion as well. The facts are that you will find companies using English, English immersion schools and an interest in English all over the world. You will find French immersion schools, Spanish immersion schools and immersion schools for other language as well, although not to the same extent. Given that most people know this to be a fact, I'm not sure what we would accomplish by changing the map; especially not since this information is already found in the text. On a final note, also a personal one, we should not confuse the ability to speak English with any desire to see English as an official, or even unofficial, language. I believe myself to be fairly fluent in English and I like the language a lot - in England, in the US, in Australia etc. I would, on the other hand, hate to see it made an official language of this country and I deplore its spread at the expense of other languages and cultures. Needless to say, that has nothing to do with it being English, I deplore every smaller language being replaced by a bigger one. Making up a map in which we impose English as an 'unofficial' language would, frankly, be offensive to many people who have no wish to identify with the language no matter how well they speak it. JdeJ (talk) 08:40, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

English as a West-Germanic language
A few users have inserted statements trying to position English as somewhere between West Germanic and North Germanic languages. While it is true that English has borrowed some very common words from Old Norse (they, law, window) that does not make English any closer to North Germanic. In comparison, English has borrowed a thousand times more words from French and Latin without being a Romance language. Out of the contemporary Germanic languages, the North Germanic ones are more similar to West Germanic languages such as Dutch and Platt than to English, although this is largely due to the Norman influence of English. Features such as a dual gender system (common nouns and neuter nouns) and simplying the case system can be found in both. That still doesn't make Dutch a North Germanic language or Swedish a West Germanic one. JdeJ 21:52, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Well put, but please don't retell us how much French/Latin/Greek shit has been shoved down our throats...Cameron Nedland 03:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Apart from vocabulary, there are some structural features in English that are Scandinavian, e.g. the formation of the future with will/shall, which is shared with Norwegian but not with German. In word order too, English is more like the Scandinavian languages where Dutch is more like German.  But this could be coincidence, as English word order is also like French (apart from adjectives preceding nouns).  As I see it, there is a continuum, where High German is at one end, the Scandinavian languages at the other, and Low German, English, Dutch and Frisian at various points in between, though obviously English is much nearer the German end of the spectrum.
 * Cameron, are you a supporter of William Barnes' proposals for a purely Saxon English ("folkwain" instead of "bus", "farspeaker" instead of "telephone"?) --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 08:50, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. Don't get me wrong, I know and like speaking Spanish and would like to learn other Romance tongues, but English should be English, Spanish should be Spanish, and so on.Cameron Nedland 05:07, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Frankly, that's a very xenophobic attitude towards language. People who start with a desire to purge foreign words from their language often end with the desire to purge foreigners from their society. —Angr 05:35, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I cannot agree there. Personally, I don't suggest removing loan words and many European languages would have to drop so many words it would be well nigh impossible to speak them. On the other hand, the country that has taken this to the extreme is Iceland and, if memory serves me right, Iceland is also the European country in which the population has the most positive attitude to foreigners on average. So while I don't agree with Cameron, I don't find anything xenophobic at all in his view, far from it. JdeJ 07:03, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * As the first line of this talk page says, “This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the English language article.” Discussion of the merits of Anglish is not appropriate here. --teb728 08:15, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * So back to the main point: English is a West Germanic tongue, even though it has lots of North Germanic words.Cameron Nedland 17:39, 30 September 2007 (UTC)


 * History: I have a problem with the statement about "native Celts" again the evidence is debated, but it's unlikely that the Celts ever overran the whole of Britain any more than the Saxons did. Many historians disagree with the whole concept of the Celtic race, regarding it as a culture and language, rather than an invasion of people. Either way, the Celts were not the native people, but an earlier invasion. Some DNA evidence suggests that no invasions of the last 10,000 years have had much impact on the British gene pool. British people are mostly relatives of the Basques. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.155.16.188 (talk) 14:42, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Liberia?
Shouldn't Liberia be in the major table of English-speaking countries? It has a population of over 3 million, and English is its only official language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jez9999 (talk • contribs) 22:09, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The table is by native speakers. How many of those 3 million+ are native speakers of English? (Give a reference please.) --teb728 22:55, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Wells, Accents of English says 1% of the population (all descendents of settlers from the USA) are native English speakers. "Among the remaining 99 per cent of the population of Liberia, English is known (if at all) only as a second language."  (Wells, Accents of English iii, p. 633). Grover cleveland 03:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Vowels
I'm a bit confused about how the "vowels" section is supposed to work. I presume its purpose is to demonstrate the different vowels that are used in English, with examples. The problem, of course, is that almost every accent of English has a different inventory of vowel sounds.

The current section is based on RP and GenAm. However, because there are several classes of words where RP and GenAm have different vowels, we end up with a rather messy list. For example, occurs in RP but not GenAm, but is included, which requires a footnote to explain its absence in GenAm. On the other hand, there are diphthongs that occur in non-rhotic accents such as RP, such as in "beer", which are absent from the table.

Can I suggest that we either just use one accent in this section, or alternatively have two separate tables? The current option we have seems half-baked, doing justice to neither GenAm nor RP. And we should definitely make clear that these are only two out of many possible vowel schemes. Thanks. Grover cleveland 04:22, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Status of English in Mongolia
I keep on finding articles that claim that Mongolia has adopted English as its second official language. What's up with this?

http://www.worldteach.org/programs/mongolia_year/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.49.197.7 (talk) 14:00, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/comsite5/bin/pdinventory.pl?pdlanding=1&referid=2930&purchase_type=ITM&item_id=0286-19033711 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.49.197.7 (talk) 14:02, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Roots
French is 100% derived from latin, so shouldnt the graph merge latin and french together? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.114.19.176 (talk) 00:39, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the chart is about individual words, and it's not true that 100% of French words are derived from Latin. (French also has words from Germanic and Celtic languages, for example.) Also, it often makes a difference whether English borrowed a word directly from Latin or indirectly via French: for example, legal is borrowed directly from Latin, while loyal is borrowed from a French word that is descended from the Latin word. —Angr 06:25, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Internationalization
Why do not to make English as a primary language in all the aviable countries in the world? It will be very good for unity! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.20.119.87 (talk) 16:54, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

what? NON NON... you can study spanish or french! Why the english people only know speak english? Why you can't speak other language? Spanish people can speak: Spanish/catalan/vasco + english. French people frech + english, but the people of USA or UK only speak english... It's very sad, open yours mind to news cultures! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.100.184.123 (talk) 00:59, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. If everyone spoke the same language whichever language that might be the world would be better. --Meridius (talk) 14:21, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

And the cultures? You are agree to lose the cultures and the languages arround the world? In this times speak english is important, but in Europe, you must speak other language or 3. .If you speak only english, you will have integration problems to live or work in another country. It is important to speak English plus another language.If you think taht French or Spanish people, for example, will try to stop speaking their language, we ambiguous.**Welcome to globalization**  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.100.184.177 (talk) 20:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)


 * This talk page is supposed to be about improvements to the English language article. This section is off topic. --teb728 t c 21:23, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Stress in two-syllable words
The article currently has, at the end of the first paragraph of (English_language), "In general, for a two-syllable word in English, it can be broadly said that if it is a noun or an adjective, the first syllable is accentuated; but if it is a verb, the second syllable is accentuated." This seems unsubstantiated as well as weasely ("in general" and "it can be broadly said"). Furthermore, if it's appropriate at that place in the article to talk about tendencies for words to have stress on one syllable or another, it seems we'd need something lengthier in order not to be misleading or flat-out wrong, which would merit its own section. --Atemperman 20:03, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Malta
English is an official language of Malta. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_speaking_countries There are a lot of english schools in Malta, and many english students especially in summer. Simonscerri 11:34, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Ranking References
The CIA reference gives no information to substantiate a ranking of any kind. Please remove this reference as it gives the ranking more authority than it actually deserves. AnthroGael 00:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Quebec
Shouldn't Quebec be light blue? French is the official language, English is clearly second. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.13.215.22 (talk) 23:56, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the logic behind colouring Quebec dark blue is that English is official and a primary language. Admittedly, it is not official on the provincial government level, but it is official within federal institutions. And, while it is clearly second to French, there is a significant anglophone minority. I will assume that similar logic explains the reason South Africa is also coloured a dark rather than a light blue. The light blue countries, for their part, have English as an official language and potentially even many second language speakers, but they do not possess significant native speakers of English. I don't, however, know what the author's definition of significant might have been. I can, nevertheless, accept this logic, but there is an important need for some consistency as the French map would then, by extention, have to include all of Canada, which it does not. Is there a cross-form explanation of how languages should be represented in maps? AnthroGael 11:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
 * In spite of the wishes of part of the population Quebec is not a country. The map does not subdivide countries. However, you might want to use image:Anglospeak.png. Andreas  (T) 12:02, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The text under the map states: "World countries, states, and provinces where English is a primary language are dark blue; countries, states and provinces where it is an official but not a primary language are light blue." Quebec is a province, where french is the official language. Oui?
 * That text explains why some areas are light blue as opposed to gray (not light blue as opposed to dark blue). I’m not sure what states and provinces it refers to. The description of the image in Commons is, “Countries of the world where English is an official or de facto official language, or national language, in dark blue; countries where it is an official/non-official but not primary language in light blue.” That might be better. --teb728 02:01, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I've corrected the caption to read simply "countries". The old caption was probably left over from some earlier image. —Angr 06:48, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Singapore
How can the article say that English is “the primary language” of Singapore when there are only 0.7 million native speakers out of 4.6 million total population? It seems to me that Singapore should be in the list of countries where English is an official language but not the primary language. --teb728 (talk) 09:59, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Clickable world map instead of small image in infobox
This template ist very rarely used (twice!, 2007-11-25). I inserted this clickable world map:

...into the article English language, and removed the small image from this template. Wkr, --Paunaro (talk) 22:50, 25 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Not a bad idea generally; but:
 * I don’t know what “template” you refer to. I answered my own question below.
 * The map should be hidden or thumb-nailed until a user activates it. Most users will not want it, and it takes up too much space to be displayed by default. Dab's change addresses this concern.
 * Quebec is in a country where English is a primary language. Since your caption is by country, Quebec should be dark blue.
 * The caption may need revising, for English is an official language in all the light blue countries; and so if the caption were true, they would be dark blue.
 * --teb728 (talk) 23:54, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, the template for the infobox. I think there should be a map in the infobox; so I restored the map there. Maybe the way to activate the big map only when it is wanted is to move it separate page, activated from the small map in the infobox. --teb728 (talk) 00:33, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I transcluded it, from English official language clickable map. This has the advantage that the map can be used on several pages. I'm also tweaking the captions. I wonder if it wouldn't be better if the links pointed to the respective dialect pages instead of the country pages (viz., Australian English, not Australia). dab (𒁳) 09:13, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

British Empire
Why not change (and considerably shorten) the intro from the current "for most people in Australia, Canada, the Commonwealth Caribbean, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America" to "for most people in Britain and ex members of the British Empire"? --Camaeron 14:22, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Because that would be incorrect. India's population alone is so large that it's safe to say that most people in britain and ex members of the british empire do *not* speak english as their native tongue.Zebulin 18:44, 30 November 2007 (UTC)